An immigrant's life is not easy. Everyone believes or so it seems there was some golden time when it was simple, easy and good. It wasn't. It certainly was less than easy street for my 4 grandparents. My Father's parents came from Sicily. My grandmother hardly spoke English but was incredibly sweet and caring. She cooked wonderful meals. Even during WWII she never worked a job outside of raising 5 kids and her first died before he was one. I don't think she was ever a citizen. My grandfather became a legal citizen almost 50 years after he came to the U.S., spoke 3 maybe 4 languages, Italian, French, Spanish and English and ultimately worked for the IRT (before it was the TA) at a power station. (He framed his citizenship paper and hung it on the wall in their parlor). When he first came to the U.S. he was a stevedore and worked at different ports along the Mississippi. When he first lived in NYC he made 75 cents a day shoveling coal for Con Ed. He could speak English quite well except he normally wouldn't unless he had to do business with some anglo. I don't know if either my Father's Father or my Father's Mother ever went to school. I wasn't very close to either of them so I never found out that much about them. They were both hardworking people as was my entire extended family.
My Mother's Mother lived with us. She spoke 4 languages too, English, Hungarian, German and Yiddish. She never finished the Hungarian equivalent of 8th grade but she taught herself to read English as well as speak it. I remember how she used to read the Daily News with a magnifying glass. In her dotage she wore glasses for nearsightedness but didn't have reading glasses. She came to the U.S. when she was 13 and worked as a servant for her "aunt" in Pittsburgh. She came from a large family but I think she was sold as an indentured servant. I'll never know for sure. She ran away to NYC when she was 15, got married when she was 16 to a Hungarian who worked as a window washer. They lived in small apartments, on the lower East Side, raised 4 children, actually she raised them by herself because my grandfather left them. And she also worked factory jobs to support her and her children. I met him once on a street corner when I was with my grandmother and he gave me a dollar. I was only about five then but I remember that. I think he would give my grandmother money when he could hang on to it and wasn't drinking it away. She wasn't more than five feet tall but she was tough as nails and as mean as a billy goat when she had to be and she wasn't afraid of anything or anyone. But when it came to me I could do no wrong. It was from her that I learned what unconditional love meant.
When my grandfather died he was already eligible for Social Security so my Grandmother could collect his Social Security when she became eligible except she wasn't a citizen. I don't know if she needed to be one but she wanted to do it. She filled out the forms or actually I helped her, I was 11 by then, and she had to go to some court in Mineola and I went with her on the train and ultimately she was made a citizen. There was no big ceremony. She was just sworn in. That was April 12, 1955. Why do I remember that date? She said it was the same day FDR died 10 years earlier and she adored FDR. That was over 40 years after she arrived in the U.S. She was more my Mother than my actual Mother and she is the one from whom I got all my attitude.
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